Major-general Obaid Muhair bin Surour, deputy director-general of the General Directorate of Residency and Foreign Affairs, and chairman of the Permanent Committee of Labour Affairs (PCLA), on Tuesday, said that nearly 11,915 workers attended awareness sessions held as part of the PCLA initiative in 2019.
The awareness programme was delivered to over 11,000 workers through 249 sessions held between March and December 2019, at the Jebel Ali Free Zone (JAFZA).
Bin Surour said the intention was to educate workers over their rights and obligations according to the UAE laws and legislations while introducing them to the culture of the Emirati Society. Moreover, enhancing their knowledge about the health and safety standards to be followed at their workplaces according to UAE laws was also given priority.
Dr Ahmed Al-Hashimi, consultant of the PCLA, and chairman of the Middle East Centre for Training and Development, stated that the awareness programme was created according to academic and scientific grounds and in compliance with international standards over human rights and migrant labour.
Besides, the programme takes the stability of labour relations between workers and employers into consideration and ensures such stability through the delivery of a comprehensive Labour Law and contractual regulation-oriented training content.
Al-Hashimi added that 3525 surveys were distributed among participating workers before and after the sessions, which revealed that 68.99 per cent of the attending workers had adequate knowledge about cultural and social behaviour within the UAE before the sessions were introduced, while the percentage climbed to 79.54 per cent after such sessions.
Additionally, 71.63 per cent of the workers were able to provide the right answers to questions related to necessary legal documents that were required to be with them during their time of employment in the UAE. This figure raised to 79.94 per cent after the delivery of the sessions, Al-Hashmi said.
Bin Surour concluded that PCLA’s awareness programme has been achieving outstanding success for several years since it first started in June 2016. The initiative has held 505 awareness sessions in JAFZA that were attended by over 40,655 foreign workers in total.
